Make Your Escape: The Signal

Derby, Jul 2017

Second up, was the venue’s original game “The Signal”. Set back from the first game with its own separate reception and briefing space, the backstory around this game is again based on a local legend.

The blurb says:

“Following reports of strange lights in the skies over Derbyshire, your team intercepts a distress signal, which leads you to an abandoned military bunker.”

My usual glazed look during the story and briefing was this time probably more down to sheer tiredness from “Spellbound as a Pair” as much as any personal ambivalence to the plot. This one could be very interesting.

So UFO sightings, strange military bunker. Got it. In we went. Actually before the review of the gameplay itself, a quick note on the fantastic welcome we received again in the second game – more ice cold water, and the welcome cool air from a portable AC unit in the room made it bearable on a very hot day.

On entering, and after the pizzazz of Spellbound, the Signal room felt a little underwhelming – a filing cabinet with padlocks, old desk, a few pictures, a crate, a Windows 7 PC locked, and my 107th old jacket hung up to search through to find a clue.

Now, I admit that having done so many rooms the feeling that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ has somewhat kicked in. A feeling that starts with the recognition of brands of padlock, then types of puzzle design, and eventually leads to recognising filing cabinet manufacturers and specific retailer and price of the UV torch you’re using. For first time players, they wouldn’t perhaps have such a strong aversion to identikit rooms quite yet!

Regardless, we ploughed on — senses dulled a bit from the back-to-back session. The Signal is a linear game – there’s hardly any scope for splitting up and solving things separately. Progress, for us, was a little slow to begin with. Puzzles were simple, but very nicely themed to the storyline, and there was a strong feeling of working through the mystery.

We eventually ground to a halt with a set of laminates which were meant to be used to derive a code to continue. We searched and searched for the final piece of the laminate “jigsaw” but to no avail. We tried to make progress with what we had, wasted time trying to think of an alternative way of getting the missing info. But nope. It was the Dreaded Room Reset Failure.

It happens. Whilst gamesmastering myself, I’ve had it happen. Mea culpa. After a bunch of clues pointing us to the places the pieces might be, we still couldn’t move on. Once we asked directly if that’s what might have happened, we were given a replacement piece, and progress could be made again.

Shortly after, a wonderful retro prop was discovered, that would prove to be useful for the remainder of the game, and we started to get closer to understanding what was being hidden in this bunker.

And, eventually, after what seemed like an age, we hit the secret to the room. It was genuinely a surprise, and the nature of the game changed with the flick of a switch (figuratively).

We moved from a fairly pedestrian experience to something far more interesting and our pace quickened slightly, buoyed by the sudden revelation. At this stage – we were left with what appeared to be a choice. A choice which actually generated two of my favourite things in escape room experiences.

Multiple storyline paths to take

Moral choices and debate

With little time to spare due to our sub-par performance, we chose what appeared to be the quickest route to completion, following a previous clue in the game to the letter.

The debate and choice I can imagine would be a lot of fun with bigger teams. This room supports up to 6 players, and that would certainly come down to a vote on the direction to take.

This was definitely an experience of two halves – or at least it should have been. A slight tweak to the gameplay to get the 2nd stage of the story earlier would be great. I know this venue prides itself on adjusting and improving games on a regular basis.

I’d definitely recommend this room, particularly if the story choice element appeals.

We, on the other hand, were terrible. Time to stop doing back-to-back rooms as a pair.

Toby adds:

My playthrough of The Signal went a little smoother than Chris’s from the sound of it. I found it initially a solid but unspectacular room, with fairly standard office-style decor, one somewhat ambiguous maths puzzle but also plenty that I liked. However, it was a game that just kept improving as it went on, getting more creative and physical and impressive as it neared the end, with the conclusion being a memorable highlight.

Very few escape rooms give players a choice of ways to complete the game, and I invariably love it when they do. Here the decision flows naturally from the story and gives a real, meaningful difference to how it ends. Our team of four all immediately favoured the same choice, and I was expecting that that would be the ‘obvious’ option that most groups would go for, so it was a surprise to hear from the operators afterwards that actually there’s a near even split in what players decide to do.

Your mileage may vary, but for me that ending helped lift what started out as a fairly typical escape game into something quite memorable. I was also impressed at the way the venue has a separate briefing area for each room – it’s perhaps a small thing, but it’s a really nice way to handle having multiple teams arriving or exiting for different games at the same time.

This game is so considerably different to The Invitation, both in game play and in quality. it is so much better. I love a room where you have to search for clues rather then just have difficult puzzles to solve. This was really interactive and once you knew what you were doing, really enjoyable.

Good theming/atmosphere (although not necessarily theming of the puzzles themselves) & lots of puzzle content to keep a team busy.

Had a loss of direction on a couple of occasions, especially at the beginning with working out how to proceed. Has made me appreciate other rooms where it\'s clear where a code goes when acquired, and also that sequence puzzles in an ideal order (frustrating to think you have unlocked a puzzle, but it eventually turns out you didn\'t have everything you needed to solve at the time). Still don\'t enjoy mathematics in any form in rooms (even with a provided calculator!).

Overall an enjoyable experience, surprisingly so given its location which seemed to cater to a younger audience (adjacent to soft-play area, climbing wall etc.). Very happy they offer a price for only 2 people, which seemed very reasonable. Go and visit if in Keswick, make sure to select the \'experienced\' setting when booking.

In doing a range of other escape rooms, I have come across a wide range of puzzles, great use of space and immersion.

As a whole it very much feels that this room tries to have a story to it but for us, it didn’t flow and was incredibly disjointed. We found things before finding the clue to lead to that thing so when we did then find the clue it was redundant and confusing.

The game starts with the GM playing Great Uncle Reginald’s video for you. This takes place in the room and so we of course, took this opportunity to start exploring the room and as a result earned a five minute clue penalty for not paying full attention to the video. Although the room overview states the solicitor has an envelope, inside of which is a VHS tape, it isn’t introduced in this way and we wondered afterwards if it would have been better to have found the video somewhere in the room (as another puzzle almost) and to then have to play it ourselves.

As we got going, we discovered that this room had limited variation in its puzzles - things were in the main either a padlock or a combination code. There was very little variety and whilst this can work in some rooms, it didn’t in this room. There was also scope for variation and some things could have easily been something other than ‘another key’. In terms of the puzzles, one was incredibly simplistic in nature (and wasn’t really even a puzzle) whilst another required careful calculation and working out. It felt like you went from one extreme to the other - there was clear thought put into some puzzles but this was completely lacking in others. My partner asked at the end if this was their first ever room because it felt very much like the puzzles had been created and had never then been updated or reviewed. There are certainly better ways of doing things, or even use of certain tech that could be used to update some of the things in this room. Compared to other rooms, it felt very much behind on the times.

There are two doors in the room to give the feel of it being a B&B, both doors have keyholes in them so naturally you think you’re going to need a key to open them, to lead into different rooms. Unfortunately this is not the case and we wasted a lot of time checking to see if the keyholes actually had locks in. I did say to the GM at the end that they shouldn’t have the keyhole in, to indicate they aren’t used in the game.

For us, there was also poor use of space. We spent a lot of time trying to work out how we were going to get somewhere which was never the case. This wasn’t at all clear and more could have been done in the design of the room to indicate this. It goes back to what I said about the original design not being reviewed or updated.

It really says it all when your partner wants to walk out with 25 minutes to go, as mine did. We were both frustrated by the lack of flow and even us standing around doing nothing didn’t prompt the GM to nudge us in any way. I also think this is where the company’s 3 clue rule falls short. We were reluctant to ask for clues, despite clearly not knowing what to do next, in case we needed to use that clue later on. In any room, I would rather ask for 20 clues and escape than ask for none and not complete it. At the end of the day, it’s my game that I have paid (in most cases a lot of money) to play, and I should be allowed to play it as I want and if that involves me asking for more than 3 clues, that should be allowed.

On the whole, possibly an enjoyable room for novices but I would say not one for more experienced players who have an understanding of escape rooms, who expect things to flow, variation in puzzles and better use of tech to support the room. Unfortunately not just The Last Testament, but my Last Room with Know Escape. I won’t be returning to do another room there.